2 Responses to Sustainability Brigade

Last night the Seattle cops confiscated about 125 tents and arrested 7 people. Some of the tents had backpacks and other personal belongings inside them including a list of phone numbers belonging to one of the Occupy Seattle Workgroups. Of the 7 arrested some have been released without charge and some have been held for booking.

You may not want to make an appointment to go down to the Parks Department Revolutionary Tent Storage Facility and reclaim your property because they will ask for your name and contact information in order to retrieve it (that is if you can find it and all it’s parts) among the pile of tents that they tossed without care into the back of a few pickup trucks and without any regard whatsoever as to it’s value to the owner. To make matters worse, they could be gathering this information so that they can send you a citation in the mail.

… Just because talks between Occupy Seattle and the Mayor’s Office broke down afetr he would not allow OS to keep tents on the City Hall Plaza during the day, (we would like tents 24hours per day in order to show solidarity with the people of more than 140 American cities and in Japan, Tokyo, England, Italy, Libya, and the other dozen or so Country’s (Whole Country’s) who are “occupying” their own community centers 24 hours per day) and also to join in solidarity fellow citizens around the globe who have been doing the same thing since the first uprising in Tunisia began 9 months ago, and since the overthrow of three middle eastern governments since then. (Each Country has one common complaint, “People Before Profits.”)

… Just because we had a single propane cook top to try feed and to heat hot water and keep soup warm for over 200 people every day, rising to 3,500 people or so last Saturday, including a large number of homeless individuals (some chronically) from all walks of life, old women, people in wheel chairs, Vietnam War Vets, Gulf War Vets, Iraq Vets, Afghanistan Vets, and countless troubled teens….…

… a cook top that we were forced to use because we were not allowed to use any electricity from any of the parks 6 or so padlocked duplex power outlets, and just because only about 1/2 a dozen businesses out of the entire Global Revolution (as far as Seattle is concerned) whom are unfortunate enough to be directly facing or adjacent to Westlake Park are directly affected by this act of free speech which is also protected by the First Amendment (yes, the first one.) (( But that is another story about the traditional community function of a “village green” or “town center” that has been depicted throughout history.))

… Just because these are the only reasons that talks between the Mayor and a large group of Seattle Citizens known as Occupy Seattle are protesting in exactly the same manner as tens of thousands of fellow protesters in most of the rest of the entire world is no reason for the Seattle Police to be harassing us the way that they have been doing to all of us for more than two weeks now.
All of the police officers that I have personally talked to (except one tonight) have been nice and we have all found common ground together when nothing else is going on and we can chat freely. We talk to the cops the same as when we all talk together while Occupying at Westlake … that is until the police “receive orders to engage.”

THEN the police took dozens of tents and arrested more than 25 people. Then… they said we can sleep in the park only if we are in sleeping bags and tarps. Then…. during two days of torrential rain with southerly winds gusting strong enough to break umbrellas (which by the way are not allowed at Westlake by protesters, but presumably OK for shoppers to have while in the park) the cops would not allow 75 all night/all day protesters and homeless to sleep under the awnings of the building which is facing the park.

The cops made everyone move into the driving rain which had weather conditions creating a wind chill factor of 32 degrees (freezing) at 15mph wind speed @ 40 degree’s Fahrenheit. We are not out here for fun. We have a good reason to be here. During this weather 5 people suffered the early stages of hypothermia including a man who called an ambulance on himself, I drove a man to a warm bed in West Seattle which was offered to him by a complete stranger and fellow protester, and I warmed 3 people in my car, including a 17 year old girl that is 3 months pregnant and to date has had no pre-natal care… and six other homeless individuals pooled their money together to share a single hotel room to dry off and get warm for just one night.

Next …the cops carried out more than a dozen more arrests, 10people, then 2more, and 2 more, all for minor things like 2people out of a group of more than 2,000 marching from Westlake to the Bank Of America Tower and back on 4th … arrested for sitting in the street while the other 1, 9998 + marchers were on the sidewalk … and then the cops said we couldn’t even sleep in the park at all when the park located in the middle of downtown Seattle “is closed” as is everything else for blocks if not miles around … and they were ordered to spend several nights in a row kicking anybody who wasn’t standing to wake them up and keep us awake.

I did manage to prevent one cop from waking the protester next to me because I pointed out to the cop that he was one of the many protesters who had brought their children with him and his boy (about 3years old) was fast asleep in a snug sleeping bag next to him on one of the few starry nights that we have had out here in the last two weeks.

During this whole government melee against citizens of Seattle, the cops took our “outreach tent”, which was not just a food and medical service meant to serve those of us who are exercising our First Amendment Rights in America in solidarity with people around the globe, but our human services tent was also for all of the teen kids on our streets for diverse and ever growing homeless population our city that has plagued us for years.

The cops took our port-a-potties from Westlake which were donated by a supporter of occupy Seattle (and not provided to us by the city as was falsely reported in tv news) so that once again there is nowhere for anybody to use a restroom downtown for miles around downtown in the middle of the night, or even during the day for that matter in most cases, unless you buy a sack of French fries, cup of coffee, or stick of gum except for the other two port-a-potties that Occupy Seattle supporters have nine blocks away in their encampment at Seattle City Hall. This is certainly an awkward chapter for a mayor that has upwards of 2,000 to 2,500 Occupy Seattle Protesters taking part in the Global Revolution at any given moment.

NEXT … … the cops descended upon us all in overwhelminmg numbers at 6:00 in the morning yesterday, (more than 75 cops) and they confiscated more than 125 tents in the name of the Seattle Parks Department, arrested 7, took our information booth’s “patio awning.” and left those of us left in such disarray that the morning commuters and general public think that we cannot even clean up our own trash when the reality of it all is that we as a large group of citizens occupying Westlake who have more than 16,000 additional supporters on-line: are trying to do just that.

If it were not for the mayor’s office refusal to allow us such a large group on the street to have sanitation, electricity, shelter, basic human services, and an acknowledgment that this is not about Seattle’s precious Westlake, the park’s annual Christmas Merry-Go-Round, or the local Christmas shopping retail statistics, this is all about world wide corporate money (mostly American money) derailing global politics, free speech, corporate environmental suicide, vs. common people in 140 U.S. cities and dozens of Countries in the free and not so free world getting together to do the right thing as a global community simply because it is the right thing to do.

I think that WE in America who support the American Occupy Movement and the people willing to camp out voluntarily in these conditions should go hassle all of the people across our great nation who slept in tents last night (without the interference, arrest and seizure of personal property by government and police) at shopping malls around this country in order to be the first on their block to buy the new I-phone… and we should ask them if we may borrow their tents for the revolution now that they are done purchasing a new phone and their night sleeping in a tent outside a shopping mall is done.

the u.s. shouldnt pay for transfer wires as favor to non working utility shareholders ,some of which lobby senator murray and let her use thier offices for cuttting the budget without upsetting the special interest that caused the budget crises and pays off our senate and house..